Saturday, Nov. 3

We planned to get an early start Saturday morning. We were up early and ready to cast off at 7:30am, only to find FOG! The river was completely covered in it! We thought about attempting the 1 mile journey towards the lock using GPS and radar, but that fog grew even thicker! By 8:15, visibility was less than 100 feet, so we decided to stay tied up at the marina.

Finally, around 10:15 the fog lifted. We made a quick call to the Whitten lock master who told us we could lock through in about 45 minutes. We hustled through our departure routine (including a quick “last chance to pee” walk for Bo) to make it to the lock on time. A little after 11:00 we pulled into the chamber. Another boat called the lock and said they were 10 minutes away, so the lock master said he would hold the lock open.  After they were secured in the lock, another boat fairly close by called and the lock master held the lock for them too. After they were secured to a bollard, we were waiting for another 15 minutes without knowing why – hoping there was no problem with the lock itself.  Finally we saw 2 more boats appear in the distance. At least there was no problem with the functioning of the lock! After waiting an hour in the Whitten lock, we dropped 84 feet - the tallest lock we have gone through so far! 

Now, we were part of a traveling flotilla of 5 boats heading down the Tenn-Tom towards the next lock. Since lock masters talk to each other, there was no need to try to pass each other up to be the first one at the next lock because we’d all be locking together anyway. So here was a line of 5 boats traveling down the waterway. (Though the 1st boat was not a Looper and they sped way ahead of the rest of us, but then had to wait for us at the lock!)  By the time we reached the 3rd lock of the day, more boats caught up with us.  Though there were only 5 of us waiting to go into the lock, the lock master mentioned 10 boats. Hmmmm… He had the 5 of us secure our boats in the chamber as far forward as possible. There are only 10 bollards to tie up to so we did as told. As we finished securing our boats we saw 2 boats heading toward the lock from up river.  Just as they tied up there was another boat, then a few minutes later the last 2 boats showed up. We’ve never been in a completely full lock chamber before, but it was impressive to see – all 10 boats locked through at once! All but one boat was stopping at Midway Marina for the night, which means 9 boats arrived there together at 3pm! The marina personnel were fantastic at handling all the boats and getting those with a deep draft over to a deeper section of the marina. We only covered 18 miles in 4.5 hours, but at least we got 3 of our remaining 11 locks on the way to Mobile out of the way.